


Sixteen Below Zero

by excandescent



Category: DBSK|Tohoshinki|TVXQ
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:22:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excandescent/pseuds/excandescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two things in life are certain, death and taxes. Shim Changmin would like to add 'boilers going down on the coldest night of the year' to that list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sixteen Below Zero

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted as _rocketsprout_

"Yah, Yunho! Wake up!"

Loud pounding filled the room and Yunho jerked awake. "Wuh?" he asked to no one in particular, the room dark except for a thin strip of light filtering underneath his door, light marred by two dark patches in the middle that shifted restlessly. The pounding stopped and Yunho let his head fall back down onto his pillow. Sleepy thoughts floated around his head.  _I'm sorry, pillow. I love you really. I'll never leave you._  The pounding began anew.

"Yunho! Get out here!"

Changmin sounded mad. Bad things happened when Changmin sounded mad. Even worse things happened when Changmin sounded calm. Some part of Yunho's brain, the part focused on survival and self preservation, realized this and kicked him over the line into consciousness. Shrugging out from the warm, clinging blankets -  _don't leave us!_  they called out plaintively - Yunho staggered to the door and opened it to a red-faced Changmin almost vibrating on the spot with anger.

"Jung Yunho, why did you turn the heating off?"

Yunho sniffed and scratched blunt fingernails through his hair, leaving it sticking up in erratic clumps. "Min-ah?" he asked groggily. Changmin was a blur of pink and brown in front of him, Yunho's eyes still sluggish to start working. "What're you on 'bout?"

"Do you know how cold it is out there? And you knew I'd be back late! I can't believe you're that irresponsible,  _hyung_!"

"What am I meant to have done this time?" Yunho had remembered to squeeze the toothpaste from the end, he'd tidied up their living room, he'd even remembered it was rubbish collection day in the morning and had cleared out their kitchen waste. It had taken him three attempts to get the smell of Changmin's fermented fish sauce from his fingers. Were there any other sins he'd forgotten about?

Changmin inhaled and puffed out his chest, then tersely snapped, "You  _broke_  the heating." Yunho gaped. "The heating, you know, that thing that keeps the apartment warm and stops us freezing? It won't turn back on and I want to know what the hell you've done to it." Every syllable was precisely enunciated, something Changmin only ever did when he was close to losing his temper completely.

Changmin's anger was palpable, as was his sarcasm, which slapped Yunho across the face like a physical blow. Yunho blinked his eyes into focus and fixed them on his younger bandmate, who glared back.

"I did not turn the heating off," Yunho bit out through clenched teeth. It was fine to accuse him of something he hadn't done that he was responsible for - Changmin did that often enough as it was - but now he was being held responsible for things outside his control. The heating had been on when he'd gone to bed, and he hadn't touched the control panel at all. Changmin opened his mouth to speak-

_Attention all residents. Attention all residents._

They stopped. The internal comms unit chirped for their attention, and both men turned to look at it. With an icy backwards glare, Changmin walked over and pressed the volume button. The voice of the night guard came over the speaker loud and tinny.

_This is a building-wide alert. Due to the cold weather one of the intake pipes has ruptured and the boilers are currently non operational. An engineer has been called, and we will keep you updated as the situation develops. Thank you for your patience and understanding._

Yunho barely resisted crowing. So it  _wasn't_  something he had done after all! He looked at Changmin smugly. The other man refused to meet his eyes, instead staring sulkily down at the hardwood floor. Silence hung heavy and thick between them as the guard repeated his announcement, although neither of them paid it any attention. Changmin rubbed the back of his neck and turned back. His eyes were still on the floor, firmly fixed on the baseboard.

"I'm going to bed," he announced quietly, hugging the wall as he slunk past Yunho. The door to his room closed with a quiet click. Yunho glanced at it, then returned to his own room with a heavy sigh. Changmin was just being Changmin, and Yunho could either forgive and forget it or let his annoyance fester and grow. The rumpled nest of his blankets were still warm as he slid back into them. _My loves, I'm back_ , he cooed to them softly, turning his face into the pillow and letting the comfort soothe his thoughts.

The other bedroom was not quite so content. Changmin's teeth chattered inside his mouth as he stripped off and changed into his night clothes, layering on a pair of jogging pants and a beat up old hoodie. The room was like an icebox, and fern frost glazed the outside of his window in elegant fractal patterns. It was hard to appreciate their beauty, not when shivers almost contorted him in two. Ten minutes of shaking and shivering underneath every sheet, blanket and quilt he possessed, and Changmin reluctantly got back up to get a hot water bottle.

Yunho's room was silent as he passed by it on tiptoes, the crack underneath dark. Without anyone else around to see, Changmin let an unconscious pout fall onto his face. He'd been out of line earlier, he knew that much. However much leeway Yunho gave him outside of the roles society expected of them, and Changmin would admit it was a lot, there were still boundaries to maintain, and ruthlessly slinging accusations around like that stepped far beyond them. Guilt pressed against him as Changmin filled the kettle and brought it to the boil. The heating panel still read 'offline', and declared in glowing red characters that the air temperature inside their apartment was currently minus eight. Outside was even colder, stretching closer to minus twenty, and Changmin knew the temperature would only continue to plummet until the pipework was fixed.  _Whenever that would be._  Changmin shivered afresh, and hugged the hot water bottle as he shuffled back into his room.

The bed was as cold as he remembered, and Changmin wrapped himself around the fuzzy hot water bottle, waiting for its heat to sink in and warm him up. Time passed. Sleep eluded him. His teeth still chattered and as he cracked one eyelid open to check the time, Changmin felt certain frost clung to his eyelashes. This was ridiculous, he thought with a frustrated sigh. An hour later and the water bottle had long since gone cold, and he was still no closer to sleep. He craved warmth like a man in the desert craves water, and there was only one place in their apartment he would find it. Changmin got up.

His feet led him in front of Yunho's door and he rapped light knuckles against the wood and waited. A muffled noise from the other side sounded enough like permission that Changmin pushed the door open. A sliver of orange light from the Seoul skyline fell in a long stripe across the room, just bright enough to outline the shape of a body underneath well stuffed quilts.

"Yunho. Yunho? I'm cold."

"Hmm? Wha' d'you want me to do about it?"

"Yunho-hyung, I'm  _cold_."

The lump underneath the covers shifted and the sheets rustled. "What do you want me to do about it, Changmin? I'm not a mind reader."

Changmin shivered as the cold air pressed closer against him. Yunho could afford to wait this out, he was already in bed, already warm and teetering on the edge of sleep. Changmin was not. He gnawed on his bottom lip as he struggled to find the right words. _I'm sorry, hyung, I shouldn't have said those things_  or  _please, hyung, can I share with you tonight?_  Still trying to silently decide on what words to use, Changmin almost missed Yunho's heavy exhale as he rolled over and threw back the covers.

"Get in quickly before all the warmth goes."

Changmin needed no second invitation. His feet squeaked against the flooring as he scrambled underneath the covers.  _Ah! So warm!_ His body sang with happiness and wriggled around on the mattress just to enjoy the glorious feeling of heat again. The mattress shifted and Changmin stilled, brought back to his senses. He turned on his side away from his bed-partner and curled up. Yunho fidgeted and adjusted the covers again, and the mattress dipped. Changmin felt himself begin to roll backwards and clutched at the edge of the bed to keep himself in position. An elbow jabbed into the small of his back.

"Keep to your own side of the bed, hyung."

"What? Changmin-ah, the  _whole bed_  is my side of the bed!"

"Shut up. I don't want to wake up and find you clinging to me."

"You're the one who sleeps like a koala!"

Changmin harrumphed. "Only because you always sprawl out enough for two people."

"You can always go back to your own bed." Yunho edged back across the sheets towards him, deliberately taunting him. Changmin frowned and prepared his counter attack. He angled his hips and pressed the bottoms of his still icy feet back against Yunho. One made contact with a knee and the other with a thigh, and Yunho shrieked and giggled loudly at the sudden cold against his ticklish skin. "Yah! Get off!" Jerking away from the sensation, he retreated to his side of the bed and Changmin muffled his victorious laughter into his shoulder.

"It's cold in there." Changmin could feel Yunho smirk in the darkness. Something in the atmosphere just told him Yunho wore a self-satisfied smirk at getting the upper hand. Well, let him smirk. Changmin was too comfortable to care. He settled and reached again for sleep. It continued to elude him. As comfortable as he was, as warm as he was, there was something that stretched tension across his shoulders and made his heart thud a beat or two faster.  _Guilt._

The words came out in a rush.

"I'm sorry, Yunho. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that." It was easier to say into the darkened room, which took the sounds and swallowed them up. At his back, he felt Yunho drag a foot across the sheet and he held his breath as he waited for a response.

"There's nothing to forgive, Changminnie-ah."

He exhaled a moist breath against the pillow, felt Yunho's light snores in the otherwise still air, and let himself shuffle an inch closer to the other man. Settling into his usual position, arm hooked underneath the pillow and legs curled up towards his stomach, Changmin let himself relax. Fiery heat drifted underneath the covers towards him, warming his back and the bottoms of his feet. His mind perked up only enough to gift him one last thought, and Changmin didn't have the motivation to will it away.

_Yunho is better than a hot water bottle._


End file.
